VacationSelector

Manila or Varanasi?

Two destinations compared in twelve categories, each scored against the same fixed benchmark cities. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

The Manila Central Post Office on the Pasig, Manila
Manila

Photo: Kenneth Surillo, Pexels License

Rowing boats below the ghats in the morning light, Varanasi
Varanasi

Photo: Dennis G. Jarvis, CC BY-SA 2.0, cropped

Your match

Manila
✓ Best match
48
match

Wins on nightlife and families with your weighting.

Varanasi
40
match

Wins on culture and sights and prices with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

Our verdict on each category, scored 0 to 100 against fixed benchmark cities.

ManilaVaranasi
Beaches & swimming. Manila leads by 8 points.8
Food & drink. Manila leads by 9 points.9
Culture & sights. Varanasi leads by 26 points.26
Nightlife. Manila leads by 54 points.54
Nature & outdoors. Manila leads by 22 points.22
Day trips. Manila and Varanasi are level on 42.
Good for families. Manila leads by 37 points.37
Getting around. Varanasi leads by 2 points.2
Shopping & style. Manila leads by 5 points.5
Affordability. Varanasi leads by 15 points.15
Live music & performing arts. Varanasi leads by 8 points.8
Wellness & relaxation. Manila leads by 10 points.10
0255075100

What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Manila and Varanasi.

When should you go?

Pick the month you can travel and see both cities side by side. The climate figures are measured averages, not a forecast.

Climate figures for July
JulyManilaVaranasi
Daytime high32 °C35 °C
Night-time low25 °C27 °C
Rainfall in the month487 mm249 mm
Sea temperature29 °CNo sea
Daylight13 hours a day14 hours a day

The whole year

Each row is shaded against that destination’s own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that figure and the palest its weakest. Shades are not comparable between the two rows.

J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Daytime high, °C
Manila
31
31
33
35
34
33
32
31
31
32
31
31
Varanasi
24
29
35
41
43
41
35
33
32
32
28
24
Sea temperature, °C
Manila
27
27
28
29
30
30
29
29
29
29
28
28
Varanasi
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Manila
26
24
40
36
220
314
487
564
509
297
152
109
Varanasi
12
14
10
11
23
110
249
200
146
34
2
5
Daylight, hours per day
Manila
11
12
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
12
11
Varanasi
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11

Where the figures come from

Varanasi has no weather station within reach, so its figures come from a gridded climate model rather than a measured record, and read a broad area rather than the city itself.

Temperature and rainfall are climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Manila: 1991-2020 normals, Science Garden (6 km from centre). Varanasi: 2001-2020 normals, NASA POWER reanalysis grid, no weather station within 90 km.

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromManilaVaranasi
New DelhiDEL
6 h 15 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
1 h 25 m
€121-127
VNS · 21 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
3 h 15 m
€205-213
MNL · 11 km
3 h 20 m
€433-468
1 stop
VNS · 21 km

The busiest departure cities for these two, with a place kept for each other part of the world. Busiest means arriving passengers where an official count exists, and where none does, the number of non-stop services flown: official route statistics are published by the European reporting countries and by nobody else, so a table ranked on them alone would offer a reader in New York or Tokyo ten European cities. Flying times are estimated from the distance between airports, and every row is a city flown non-stop to both. Where the typical offer connects anyway, the stops are shown. Under each figure is the airport the flight lands at and how far that is from the centre, because the nearest airport is not always the one a route is flown to. Where both columns name the same airport it is one flight, and the difference between the two is the distance printed beside it. Typical return fares for 2026-10 to 2026-12, cached market data up to 7 days old. The figure is the middle half of the offers found, so a single price means they agreed and a range means they did not; for a typical route that middle half spans about a quarter of the median, and for the least settled routes rather more than the median itself.

Before you go

MeasureManilaVaranasi
Official languageEnglish, Filipino, TaglishHindi, English
CurrencyPhilippine Peso (PHP)Indian Rupee (INR)
SocketsABC220 V, 60 HzCM230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+8UTC+5:30
Emergency number911108 or 112
Elevation9 m76 m
Main airportNinoy Aquino International Airport (MNL)11 km from centre90 non-stop destinationsLal Bahadur Shastri International Airport (VNS)21 km from centre16 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year18 days-

By the numbers

MeasureManilaVaranasi
City population1,902,5901,198,491
People per km²76,10414,598
Museums within 10 km272
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months-

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Manila or Varanasi somewhere new.

Browse every destination

Sources

Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. Non-stop route lists from the "Airlines and destinations" tables on English Wikipedia airport articles, by Wikipedia contributors, reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Currency from the ISO 4217 register maintained by SIX, cross-checked against country data from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Price level from World Bank open data (PPP conversion factor for private consumption and official exchange rate), CC BY 4.0. Time zones from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0); clock offsets computed from the IANA time zone database. Temperature and rainfall for destinations with no weather station are from the NASA POWER 2001-2020 climatology, derived from MERRA-2. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm. Typical fares from Travelpayouts (Aviasales data). Route-level air passenger statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0.

Category scores are our editorial verdict under rubric v3, each placed against the same fixed benchmark cities; the climate and flight figures are measured. How the scores are set. Snapshot generated 2026-10-27. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.